


We'll Find a Way to Survive

by greenbucket



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Expectations, F/M, Graduation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-15
Updated: 2017-09-15
Packaged: 2018-12-30 02:58:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12099231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greenbucket/pseuds/greenbucket
Summary: Lardo and graduation.





	We'll Find a Way to Survive

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by jack-manpain-zimmermann's [post on tumblr](https://jack-manpain-zimmermann.tumblr.com/post/165347859500/abominableobriens-and-omgcpwomen-im-still) about Lardo and graduation.
> 
> Unbeta'd. Title from Arcade Fire's _Put Your Money On Me_.

It’s a Thursday evening and Lardo is sitting with her legs on her desk, a bowl of tomato rice in her lap that’s been in the fridge for at least four days and is starting to taste kinda funky, wrapped in a hoodie even though it’s warm because whatever. It feels comforting to be wrapped up. She has three texts from her mom and two from her dad that she’s been ignoring for three days, even though they’re just sweet updates on life at home.

Shitty is talking fast on Skype about some asshole in his class. Lardo’s pretty sure it’s the same dick that comes up every week when Shitty has a two-hour class with the dude but he really is a dick so she lets Shitty get it all out even when he’s recycling the same criticisms again. He still looks grey around the eyes and she can see three coffee cups from different stores on his bedside table. His hair needs washing and it’s pretty fucking ridiculous but Lardo can’t look away from how the greasy look falls differently now Shitty hasn’t got a flow.

When Lardo had first cut Shitty’s hair it had been funny at first, chilling in the bathroom while Shitty had showered then brushing his hair out with a comb and hacking it into all the ugliest styles she could think of with threats to leave it like that. He’d laughed and said hockey players were, like, contractually obliged to have ugly as fuck haircuts so she’d better pull through on that.

Neither of them had given voice to the fact Shitty wasn’t going to be a hockey player anymore but they had fallen quiet as Lardo carried on cutting his hair into a respectable attempt at what he’d called a ‘neutral upstanding lawyer bro-do’. When she was done they’d looked in the bathroom mirror, Lardo on a stool for height and her head head poking out over Shitty’s shoulder, and Shitty’s mouth had been shut tight like he didn’t trust himself to speak, his eyes a little watery.

Lardo had wanted to kiss the top of his head, or something, but they weren’t like that yet. Or they were because what was personal space even but Lardo didn’t know if she could do it like they were still just bros, felt like maybe it would come across too heavy. Shitty had barely even looked like himself without the flow, the back and sides of his neck paler and vulnerable looking where they hadn’t seen steady sun in years. It was too much and Lardo hadn’t wanted to start crying about shit so she’d given him a noogie instead and then called him a nerd and the moment had broken.

Now all the feeling about his flow comes rushing back. Graduation is right around the corner and Lardo has literally fuck all planned and she’s fucked it all up and her parents are breathing down her neck about how she hasn’t got a job as a doctor or some shit lined up for after Samwell even though she’s an _art major_ and she misses having Shitty here in the Haus with her to talk some gender shit and smoke with her in the reading room when the stress was too much. Now they’re all growing up and having to move out and on and Shitty won’t be able to grow his flow back for years if ever and Lardo is fucking dreading the end of the year so much because literally what is she going to _do_?

She’s halfway through a mouthful of tomato rice and Shitty is still ranting about the asshole dude when she realises her throat is almost too tight to swallow and, jeez, she’s actually crying.

“Dude, Lards – are you crying?”

“ _No_ ,” Lardo says with as much force as she can while crying and talking around a half-chewed bowl of tomato rice. She spits it back into the bowl which is gross but whatever, it tasted weird already and it’s not like she’s sharing the rice with anyone else.

Shitty kindly ignores the rice spitting. “Hey, talk to me, bro. What’s going on?”

“Nothing.”

A sigh. “Lards.”

“ _Nothing_.”

“Lardo, come on.”

“Shits, it’s nothing you can fucking fix, okay? Leave it.”

“For fuck’s sake, I’m not saying let me fix all your problems,” Shitty says, looking if anything more tired and that’s the last thing Lardo wanted. “I’m saying talk to me, let all that negative shit out. Bawling in the middle of me sharing the latest horrors of law school is pretty fucking standard but dude’s been worse and you haven’t started the waterworks so I’m thinking it’s not the current and future state of our legal system that’s got you crying, not that I’d judge you if it was.”

Lardo pushes through the shit-ton of crap that’s been building on her desk for weeks in search of a tissue then wipes her eyes and messily blows her nose when she finds a vaguely clean one. She doesn’t feel better really but the short burst of crying has taken some of the pressure off, reduced the stress to kinda-manageable instead of holy-fuck-what-do-I-do. She takes a long gulp of her water before she starts to talk.

“It’s just like, all this graduation shit that I really don’t wanna deal with. I have no idea what I’m doing and me and Rans used to be, like, bros in that but now even he’s sorted and I’m still not and all the other art kids have had plans since day one because apparently that’s what you’ve gotta have if you get a degree in art and _no one_ told me. I don’t know where I’m supposed to live except move back to my parents which would be fine because I’d be nearer you and they’re my parents, y’know, but they’re all ‘Larissa, we just want what’s best for you but also you gotta do this exact thing that we decided was best’ and ‘Larissa, your art is so interesting but how are you gonna move forward with it’ and like– _fuck_.”

Lardo’s heart is beating hard against her ribs and her hands are shaking with the adrenaline of letting it all out. She wipes her eyes again and continues, unable to look at the screen but before she can overthink it: “I just miss getting to hang out with you every day and now I won’t even have these guys to hang out with anymore and it’s all gonna suck and I hate it.”

Her room still feels lonely and cold even as the sounds of the Haus carry on all around but it’s a little less than before and Lardo’s chest feels a lot lighter. She scoops up some of her saliva-tomato-rice and shoves it in her mouth, still keeping her eyes on the floorboards.

“ _Bro_ ,” Shitty says after a moment. When she looks up, his eyebrows are reaching his hairline. “Like, _Lards_.”

“I know, it’s all my fault because I should’ve organised better but you get why it sucks, right?”

Shitty makes a spluttering noise and says, “Fucking hell, no way. It’s not your fault art is undervalued by capitalist society and you’ve got parents with expectations and shit, I’m saying holy shit, man, you do not need to be getting so tied up with this and if you are you gotta let someone know before you’re choking on your tomato rice.”

“But there’s like a bazillion things I need to sort and I don’t even know how to do any of it,” Lardo says. “Like, how do I just make myself have direction in life and shit?”

Shitty’s leaning in close to the camera, tucked with his knees up on his desk chair and laptop balancing on top judging by the way its shaking every now and again, and Lardo wishes she’d thought ahead to keep this meltdown until they’d been together in person. Talking over Skype is still better than phoning but – not to be a baby – Lardo could do with a hug.

“You gotta just go with the flow, at least half the people graduating don’t know what they’re doing.”

“That’s your advice? Chill? Are you Nursey?”

“Hand on heart, swear to fuck, the dude’s onto something with that one. Why panic?”

Lardo can feel herself getting irritated and she hates that her fuse is so short these days but what does Shitty know about trying to figure out graduation, he got into fucking _Harvard Law_ and his mom is a like a hippie or something and is all about self-actualisation and shit.

“I have no time to figure out all my shit and jobs are already getting back to people and I’ve wasted a fuck-ton of money on a degree I don’t know what to do with,” she says, carefully steady.

“And you’ve got your whole life to figure something out, bro. Graduating is sad and scary as fuck but, let me tell you, it feels _amazing_. The ‘swawesomest thing to ever happen.”

Lardo sighs. “I know, Shits. I just wanna know what I’m doing.”

Shitty puts the laptop back on his desk, shifts awkwardly in his chair. “Well, yanno. If you wanted you could come split rent with me while you work shit out. Your parents would probably be cool with it and you’re probs overqualified for all the retail jobs and whatever you could get. You could look into grad school shit, too.”

Lardo feels herself tearing up again. “Shits.”

Shitty shrugs like he hasn’t probably thought it over for months and mumbles, “Only if you wanna, man. It’d be pretty fucking great to have you.”

“Shut up, I’d be coming for that crazy good BU painting and sculpture MFA program,” Lardo says, meaning _yes yes yes please_ and _thank you._

“Got your back, bro,” Shitty says, meaning _love you_.

They grin stupidly at each other for a bit over the pixelated screen. Lardo’s still wrapped up in a hoodie, spit-filled decaying rice for dinner, head pulsing with crying and her face itchy with tears and it’s all still unclear as fuck but at least there’s something now. The beginnings of a plan. Lardo still can’t believe sometimes that she really gets to date her best friend, they’re really doing this and it’s as good as she’d ever hoped. It seems stupid now to think she had to go this alone, when Shitty’s sitting with her after a long as fuck day and giving her a reality check.

“God, I wish we could make out now,” she says because sure, romance, but God she wishes they could make out now.

“Oh fuck, me too,” Shitty says, expression still concerned and she knows he’s probs going to be carrying some guilt about not noticing she was feeling bad and he’ll crack the closer to deadlines they get but she’ll have his back too when it all gets too much for him. “When are you visiting again?” he asks.

Lardo pulls out her calendar from her desk of crap and for once the circled graduation day, still some rows down, doesn’t make her feel quite as much tight, sucking anxiety. Her and Shits compare their schedules and she breathes easy.


End file.
